Once she was seated, I used another weapon—my penknife—to cut the bindings from a nearby stack of recyclable papers.

“It’s called using what works,” I said as I tied her. “You should try it. Starting with learning your own kind of magic. If you’d cast a witch’s binding spell, I’d be the one sitting here, and you’d be the one with the conch shell.”

She fumed and squirmed and glared. I closed my eyes and drank in her rage, then picked up my beach bag and walked away.

I WAS PREPARED for Romeo to give me a hard time about passing the test. He grumbled and glowered, and I got my chaos reward, but he didn’t try to withhold the prize, probably for the same reason he hadn’t let me walk out when I’d threatened to—he was well paid for this middleman job and wouldn’t risk losing it.

He gave me an address and told me I was expected to show up there in two hours.

I HAD THE taxi do a drive-by of the gang’s address before I returned to my apartment, and I was glad I did, because it told me a shopping trip was in order.

The taxi driver recommended Bal Harbour Shops and it was a good call. And a good thing I was using someone else’s credit card.

Normally my frugal side would have kicked in, but I was still riding the high from besting the sorcerer, the witch and the goblin, so I was in the mood to treat myself. Considering that the test hadn’t been the cakewalk Benicio promised, I felt justified using his cash.

ANOTHER CAB TOOK me to my temporary apartment. The driver made me for a tourist from the first word and tried to “treat” me to the scenic route. I might not know the layout of Miami, but I spotted that trick after two blocks and ordered him back on track.

As we neared my apartment, I marveled at a wrecking ball tearing through what looked like perfectly good single-family homes—big houses, luxurious even. But houses nonetheless, on valuable property that could hold a hundred times that many in luxury apartment condos. One glance over the Miami skyline, dotted with cranes and skeletal high-rises, told even the newest visitor that this was a city on the move. Out with the old, in with the new.

My apartment was what I would call new, though by Miami standards, it might be a few scant years from the wrecking ball. It wasn’t to my taste—small, antiseptic and cold, painted in grays, whites and blacks, with spare modern furniture—but was in a trendy South Beach neighborhood and, for a girl like Faith Edmonds, location was everything.

I got back to the apartment just in time to change my clothes and place a few calls.